Atomic Heart impressions: Shock-ingly good shooting

Enlarge / The glorious future that awaits you in Atomic Heart involves dismantling a lot of the glorious future constructed by an alternate-history Soviet Russia. (credit: Mundfish / Focus Entertainment)

Note: Atomic Heart arrived to us in the middle of last week, with its embargo falling on a holiday Monday. What follows is not a full review but impressions of the first few hours. There are very light spoilers for the first 6-7 hours of gameplay.

One of the best things a first-person action game can have is a great kick. As a backup when ammo is scarce, or a crowd control tactic, a solid boot adds gravity to combat that can otherwise become detached crosshair clicking.

In Atomic Heart, you don't have a kick, but the humanoid robots sure do. Give them a chance, and they'll fling themselves into a two-footed jump-kick that hits like a fishtailing Chevy. If you don’t dash out of the way, you spin and hit the ground with a thud, slowly getting up from your hands while vulnerable to more damage. It's some of the most visceral melee fighting I've seen in a first-person shooter. And the gunplay has a similar oomph.

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